August 18, 2011
According to a video posted over at the Heritage Foundation, CEO Andy Puzder of CKE Restaurants testified, “with franchisees in the United States we employ about 70,000 people.” [13:50] What’s truly fascinating about this is that “the ACA [Affordable Care Act] will increase our health care costs approximately $18 million per year … That’s a 150 percent increase from the $12 million we spent on health care last year.” [17:06]
Apparently, CKE spent on health care less than $15 per employee per month last year. Either the health care benefit was amazingly skimpy, or very few CKE employees received it. Regardless, if everyone at CKE were part-time minimum-wage workers, that would imply total wages of more than half a billion dollars annually. Including health care costs, an extra $18 million would imply a raise of less than 3.5 percent. The minimum wage, by contrast, has fallen in real terms by 5.5 percent since it was last raised in July 2009.
